Bear Lake Monster

A Utah Ghost Story

retold by

S. E. Schlosser

If you travel to Bear Lake in Utah on a quiet day, you just might catch a glimpse of the Bear Lake Monster. The monster looks like a huge brown snake and is nearly 90 feet long. It has ears that stick out from the side of its skinny head and a mouth big enough to eat a man. According to some, it has small legs and it kind of scurries when it ventures out on land. But in the water - watch out! It can swim faster than a horse can gallop - makes a mile a minute on a good day. Sometimes the monster likes to sneak up on unwary swimmers and blow water at them. The ones it doesn't carry off to eat, that is.

A feller I heard about spotted the monster early one evening as he was walking along the lake. He tried to shoot it with his rifle. The man was a crack shot, but not one of his bullets touched that monster. It scared the heck out of him and he high tailed it home faster than you can say Jack Robinson. Left his rifle behind him and claimed the monster ate it.

Sometimes, when the monster has been quiet for a while, people start saying it is gone for good. Some folks even dredge up that old tale that says how Pecos Bill heard about the Bear Lake monster and bet some cowpokes that he could wrestle that monster until it said uncle. According to them folks, the fight lasted for days and created a hurricane around Bear Lake. Finally, Bill flung that there monster over his shoulder and it flew so far it went plumb around the world and landed in Loch Ness, where it lives to this day.

Course, we know better than that. The Bear Lake Monster is just hibernating-like. Keep your eyes open at dusk and maybe you'll see it come out to feed. Just be careful swimming in the lake, or you might be its next meal!

You can read a longer version of this spooky Utah folktale in Spooky Southwest by S.E. Schlosser.

Comments

I like that one. I saw it in Moses lake Washington, near the sand dunes.

u guys never seen it because it comes out at night to hunt i live in utah by bearlake about 4- 6 miles and 4 girls went missing while they were camping there like some animals it prombley dosent come out at day time and stays in the water

ive seen it on TV, its a show called Lost Tapes and it was when these girls went to Bear Lake for a Birthday, they stayed after dark and then it like came out and started attacking them! 2 of the girls are still missing today even though the lake has been rake-searched, i dunno about you, but you couldnt pay me enough to swim in that lake!! What if it is real? Seemed pretty real to me!! I sugest that someone puts up a camera, leaves it there all night and see whats on it when they come back. Then we might have some actual footage of the creature, even tho ive already seen it, it kinda looked like a massive elephant trunk... gah! SCARY!

Well maby i will go and stay the night there with a few guns and a trip wire around my camp that trigers a bunch of flood lights, after theres a few bullet holes in it then i might think about the one thing it did wrong, it came after me.

Ive seen it when we were boating i saw a huge white thing in the water just for an instant it was about 9' and 15' long was all i could get because it was just a quick glimpse. o btw the gov or Mayer wont tell you because they will just get people scared off and hunters will try to ketch it, and they don't want a panic it will also ruin the tourist attraction they also have fish that is only located in bear lake.